Repurposing plastic Easter eggs

I have yet another use for these super cheap plastic eggs. First, we did the alphabet and/or color matching game. Now it's time for some decorative fun.

Gather eggs, newspaper, acrylic paints, brush(es), and paint water. Start some music, if that suits you. :-) For this project, I only set out blue, silver, and white paints.

Paint, sponge, swirl, or whatever floats your boat.

Let dry for an hour or so.

Fill with sweet treats, use for decoration or...

do what I'm doing: Fill each egg with flower seeds, and lay them inside a real bird's nest. Pair with gardening gloves, or a potted plant (make the plant labels, too!), and use for your next hostess gift. :-)

(A gift for a mom with little kids would include the mammoth sunflowers, and other large-seed, fast-growing, delightful flowers. For moms with older or grown kids, I'd probably include moss rose or snapdragons...tiny seeds...)

The Polka Dot party

On Friday, we had a mini Polka Dot party for Little Lad's 3rd birthday.

We opted out of traditional birthday cake, to have Little Lad's favorite, strawberry shortcake, instead.

Even a Polka party needs pirate hats!


AAwww

Kids can stay entertained for hours with party hats and balloons.

One sweet friend even gave homemade polka dot crayons. :-) So thoughtful and creative.

Mmmm.... Tracy, thanks so much for bringing extra yummy desserts...

(blueberry, cream cheese, cinnamon deliciousness)

Polka dot foods: chocolate birds' nests with malt ball eggs, pretzel balls, orange and banana slices, round shortcakes with strawberries on top.

At age 2, Scarlett has perfected her hair flip.

I had a great time, with fabulous family and friends. My sweet Little Lad just ate up the attention and yummy foods. I know I'm short on descriptions, but I've been short on time and energy, so I'm trying to catch up now. :-)

That afternoon, I finally went in to the doctor, to get NatureMan checked out, and have some blood tests done. NatureMan has a sprained area in his chest, that should be fine after some Motrin for a few days. Nothing is fractured, thank goodness!!

All of my tests looked good. Blood pressure was on the low end of normal, I'm not anemic, pulse seems fine... I did have a slight fever, but nothing that would indicate an obvious problem. If I'm still funky in a week, we'll do some thyroid tests. My doc thinks I may just be getting sick.

I did notice yesterday, however, that I feel much worse if I've had much caffeine or if I wait too long to eat. I also tend to feel the worst around 2pm, for some reason.

Today I've made a point to eat little amounts every hour, and have felt much better.

Thanks for praying for us.
Hope you are enjoying this cooler weather. I'm not thrilled about it, but we did enjoy a family firepit lunch in the backyard, while playing Yahtzee. I lost. Boo.

Have a fabulous week.

just swimmy

Okay, so I'm tired. My body is playing silly tricks on me, with all the lightheadedness and whatnot. My energy level is up and down, crazy-high and then pass-out low. I mean, really? This is ridiculous. And, no, I haven't gone to the doctor. Go ahead and tell me that I should. I know. But I'm busy, you see. Too many activities planned, places to go, school to teach. Who has time to spend half the day at the clinic? Then again, when I stand up and almost fall over, maybe it's time to get some blood work done? I need to bring my NatureMan in tomorrow anyway for a once-over, after a rough-and-tumble knees-hitting-chest accident, involving his brothers and Daddy. Males.

I'm tired. And I can't do the things I want tonight; I'm all lightheaded and whatnot. I want to make guacamole and then eat chips with it. The extra salt should help with the super low blood pressure... and I just like guacamole, so any excuse is good enough to eat it. But I don't want to stand up to make it. Ugh. Kitchen floor, here I come.

...and, by the way, I did jump on the trampoline, totally clean my house, and go grocery shopping today (energy-high).... just started getting ill (energy-low) again on the way home.

So, if you'd be so inclined, pray that when I do go in, it'll be a minor little thing, like simply Hypotension...and they'll tell me to eat more chips.

Lovely Lake Lunches, Labeling Plants, Learning about Power

We had an awesome time at the lake park today with my sister Julie's kiddos. They are so cute, entertaining and ...cautious. I live with one fairly mellow little girl, one moderately mellow oldest boy, and two crazy little bundles of energy. My sister's kids are not so crazy-hyper. When we get the cousins together, the stark contrast in personalities is evident.

Take rock-crossing for example.

Little Lad just took off running across each rock, sure that his leap would land him safely on the other side.

Scarlett... cautious... slow... even turns around to step down. :-)Little Lad, leaps again, now certain that he is King of Rocks and his magical super powers will carry him across any gorge. Scarlett watches. In awe? Or does she think he's out of his mind? Then we came home to finish up school. In the spring, the picture below is our typical school day. We load up our books, activities, snacks, and drinks and haul it all to the picnic table. LittleLad plays around (or under) us as we work. I can't think of a better environment for learning.
**contented sigh**

Below, Learning about different kinds of power

Making waves-- Studying hydroelectricity and Wave Power.

(Clear bottle filled with half blue-tinted water, half baby oil. We added glitter and shells to ours.)

After school, we planted!!! Our soil and pots were ready and waiting, and the front flower beds have been cleared. We planted flowers galore, strawberries, herbs, and transferred veggies.

Naturally, plants must be labeled, and that's where ART comes in. Oh, the possibilities.

Labeling with painted Popsicle sticks

New this year: using objects, such as small decorative eggs
to display the plant type. For more ideas and pictures of what we did, check out our art site about it here.

11th Annual U of A Horse Festival

The Artist-child is slightly (ahem) obsessed with horses. I'm quite sure she would exchange our home and everything inside for a horse, given the chance to do so. Naturally, we had to take her to the horse festival, a couple towns over.

We watched the Mounted Fury Jousting Troupe of Cedar Springs Equestrian Center,

Equine Extremist Tommie Turvey (his "episodes" alone were well worth the cost of the show!! So entertaining!),

the debut of a champion Friesian stallion, Frederik the Great

(you can't even imagine the beauty of this horse!)

high speed drill teams
We also watched the Parade of Breeds, which included the Gypsy Vanner ($30,000 to get one,) Friesian, Arabian, Andalusian, many Gaited Horse breeds, Mustangs, Mules, giant Draft Horses, adorable Miniatures.

We watched dogs rounding up sheep,

horses dressed like sheep (**how embarrassing!**)

...and even itty bitty cowboys roping. This kid is 6-years old!
We walked through all of the vendors' booths and bought a book from an author there, who autographed it for my darling little girl.

The kids pet all kinds of horses outside the arena. This one belongs to the U of A.

To top the day off, The Artist-child was able to meet one of her pen-pals, a fellow horse-lover. :-)Thank you so much, Claudia, for your correspondence with my little beauty.

Woot, woot! So happy we had the opportunity to do something like this for our girl!

I met the Duggars

We happened to be testing at the same site as the Duggars on Wednesday. Unless you live in a cave, I'm sure you know who the Duggars are. They are only the world's largest family. The Duggars have their own TV show, and just released a book, The Duggars: 20 and Counting!
I admire and respect this family deeply. They take this verse seriously: “Lo children are a heritage of the Lord, the fruit of the womb is His reward.”

And yet they come up against tremendous opposition. Why? There are people out there with two children, who are doing a lousy job. Some people just shouldn't have children. And then there are people, like the Duggars, that absolutely put family first. They love and cherish each child, they are successful and happy, and they are not a "burden on society." These are the people that need our prayers and support.

See those white vans? Those are Duggar-vans. And here's Jim Bob himself, with one of his crew, and my Artist and Little Lad. Yes, I risked humiliating myself in public to take a picture of this man and his son. It was worth it.

(I worked myself into the picture...see me??)

A friend joked that Jim Bob is putting his blessing on my Little Lad. Now my baby is destined for greatness...and a large brood!

Have you ever met anyone famous?

maybe this will wear them out!

So, we bought thisI'm not sure who is enjoying it the most.

I'd show you a picture of me doing the splits in mid-air, but it's just not pretty!

And, just so you know,

when you have this and you've had these,

you'll probably need to stock up on these